


White Christmas

by Willaphyx



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, and hugging, mention of minty, post season 2 reunion, snowstorm, there are a lot of feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-21
Updated: 2015-12-21
Packaged: 2018-05-08 02:02:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5479163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Willaphyx/pseuds/Willaphyx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She comes with the first snow and Bellamy thinks he must be dreaming.</p>
            </blockquote>





	White Christmas

**Author's Note:**

> I'm playing really fast and loose with the show's timeline here (in terms of months and seasons) mainly because I honestly have no idea what month it's supposed to be. But then I'm not sure if the writers even know so whatever. But it's December and I wanted to write about snow and feelings so here we are.

            He stands at the gates, eyes watchful, fixed on the line of trees, more out of habit than need. No attack has been mounted from within those woods in months and yet, he doesn’t know how to stop. The weight of his gun over his shoulder is welcome, forgiving, reminds him that he had a purpose in this new society.

            “Bellamy!”

            A familiar voice. He turns.  Miller, newly knit beanie pulled down over his head strides towards him.

            “Anything?”

            This is their daily ritual. And still, after months, Miller humors him.

            “Quiet as the grave,” Bellamy answers, eyes sliding over to his friend.

            Miller’s shoulder brushes his briefly as he stops, looks out over the empty plain.

            “Dinner’s soon.”

            Bellamy heaves a breath. The question is evident under his words, those two words laced with so much meaning it makes Bellamy’s head spin.

            “Not tonight.”

            Miller’s chewing his lip but doesn’t say anything.

            It’s then that Bellamy feels the first of them, a cold pinprick of the briefest pain against his cheek, melting away into a soft burn.  He startles, claps a hand to his cheek.  There’s more of them now, and his face burns with icy heat, water melting down his face.

            Miller’s laugh is too loud and Bellamy startles again.

            “Snow,” Miller says wondering, lifting his hands up to catch the flakes, which Bellamy can see falling now, heavier and harder as the seconds tick by, starting to coat the ground in a thin, fragile, layer of white.  “Monty said it was about time.”  There’s a note of wonder in his voice that Bellamy wishes he could feel.

            “You should get inside,” he says instead.  “I’m sure they’re missing you.”

            Miller drops the act. “Come inside, Bellamy.”

            _Please. Come inside._

            He jerks.

            “You freezing your ass out here won’t make any difference.”

            “You don’t know that,” Bellamy croaks finally.

            “I’ll go get your sister.”

            Bellamy laughs, humorless. “I’m fine, Miller. Go find your boyfriend.”

            Miller’s hand falls heavy on Bellamy’s shoulder, squeezing.  Bellamy allows himself to be comforted, eyes finding the line she walked all those months ago.  Sometimes he thinks he can see the tread of her boots, standing out like a blinking beacon amongst the boot prints of the rest of their people.

            _Come find me,_ he imagines they scream.

            He’s too lost in a world of “I can’t lose you, too” to notice when Miller leaves his side, hand sliding off his shoulder with that defeated energy that comes when someone knows they’ve lost.  He slips inside the gates, not sparing Bellamy a last look.  He knows already what he’ll see: the ramrod straight back of a solider, back from the war but to move on.

            He doesn’t know how long he stands there, letting the flakes fall around him, nest in his hair, melt down his face.  The cold makes Bellamy feel human and calls an uncomfortable amount of attention to how long it’s really been since he felt alive.  It was that day, he’s sure, that she walked away from him when the last of his soul drained out of him.  He’d watched her leave without looking back, so sure of herself, so sure that this was what _she_ needed that she hadn’t spared a thought for what _he_ needed.

            Her.

            The flakes are falling fast and hard now.  Bellamy can barely see two feet away from his face and he’s sure that if he didn’t move he’d be buried by morning, an ice-coated guardian at the gates, ready for spring to thaw him out and breathe life back into his frozen heart.

            He wouldn’t have noticed it if it wasn’t for the flash of red in the white, so out of the ordinary that Bellamy’s reaching for his gun before he’s even sure there’s something to be worried about.

            Soldier’s reflexes, he thinks abstractly as his eyes narrow and he leans forward into the gale, searching for that briefest flash of color that he’s certain he imagined.

            But there it is again, closer now.  It’s pink, he realizes, the same as the tint of the sky in the mornings when the sun has first begun to rise. But he’s not staring at the horizon now, and it’s not dawn.

            Though maybe it is, he allows himself to think.  Maybe it’s the dawn of a new era.

            Bellamy hasn’t allowed himself to hope since the early days, back when they were still building their small slice of heaven, back when there was enough work to keep Bellamy’s mind from wandering miles away, among the trees, with the one person he needed to feel whole again.

            And now a figure emerges from the storm, bundled up enough to be indistinguishable, except for the smallest tendrils of hair reaching out, blowing across the person’s face. This is the pink that Bellamy saw and he doesn’t need to track the blonde among the pink streaks to know the woman walking out of the blizzard.

            She stops, as if unsure, after all this time, of how she’ll be received.  He can read it in her eyes, wary and careful, and Bellamy didn’t expect this to go this way.  If he’s being honest, he didn’t expect this to happen at all.

            “You came back,” he manages.

            “I came home,” she replies and it’s really her, it’s really Clarke, and Bellamy can’t stop himself from breaching the feet between them, reaching out with his arms spread, needing to touch her, to feel her, to be sure that’s she’s real.

            She seems to be possessed by the same, as she steps forward almost robotically, one hand unhooking the heavy fabric blocking everything but her eyes.  She’s smiling, he notes, and he feels something inside him break open, a floodgate bursting open.

            “Clarke,” he whispers, needing to say her name.

            She nods, almost frantic, and she’s in his arms and her face is buried in his shoulder, her hands so tight against his back that he thinks he can’t breathe.  There are tears on his cheeks, he realizes, almost indistinguishable from the rivulets of snow melting out of his hair except for the taste of salt on his lips.

            “I’m so sorry,” she’s whispering against his jacket, slow and quiet like a mantra and he only squeezes her closer in response.

            He forces himself to let her go, hold her at a distance.

            “Clarke,” he says, searching for the words.  It’s been so long since his words mattered so much and he finds he’s forgotten how to ask. “Are you—”

            “I’m done running, Bellamy,” she answers.  “I tried to bury it, stop it, kick it, but I need my people.”  The next breath she takes is shaky. “I need you.”

            “I’m not okay,” he tells her, biting back on a sob.

            She shakes her head. “I dream about them sometimes,” she tells him and he can almost see it in his head, the prone bodies of the innocent laid out in grotesque shapes, skin buckling and burning in the radiation-soaked air of Level 5.

            “There was always something out there,” she adds, “pulling me back to you.”

            He pulls her back in and she falls against him with a gasp, the sound of acceptance, of finally letting go.

            “Thank you,” she whispers.

            “We’re going to talk,” he says into her hair.  “But not now.”

            She nods and he smiles, overcome.

            “Merry Christmas, Bellamy,” she breathes into his shoulder.

            “Merry Christmas, princess.”


End file.
